


The Sorrow of Steve Rogers

by buriedbarnes



Category: Bucky Barnes - Fandom, Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Steve Rogers - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, but that's also kinda up to your interpretation, hints of Steve Rogers having relationships with all three at different points, mentions of Bucky Barnes - Freeform, mentions of Sam Wilson - Freeform, mentions of peggy carter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 21:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15324345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buriedbarnes/pseuds/buriedbarnes
Summary: For seventy years, he slept. While he remained suspended in time, in limbo within the ice, the world moved on without him. With each advancement made, each decade passed, the memory of Steve Rogers, the man he was, became legend, lore, a bedtime story for children. The world’s first super soldier, the man who could do anything but stave off death.





	The Sorrow of Steve Rogers

**Author's Note:**

> please be kind. i haven't posted/written anything fanfic like in 3 years.
> 
> wrote this just because i was thinking about all the shit steve must have gone through emotionally like his storyline is honestly fucked up
> 
> also idk if this is really fanfic, moreso just my elaboration on steve's inner monologue/emotional state throughout the events of the mcu

For seventy years, he slept. While he remained suspended in time, in limbo within the ice, the world moved on without him. With each advancement made, each decade passed, the memory of Steve Rogers, the man he was, became legend, lore, a bedtime story for children. The world’s first super soldier, the man who could do anything but stave off death.

He awakens to the sound of an old, baseball game in a small room. It feels tacked together and familiar, too familiar, like he’s lived it before. He bursts from the room into an office building and out onto a crowded street. He thinks he knows where he is, but New York is different than it used to be, so much louder, so much brighter. How can something so familiar feel so foreign? What happened after the war? How can this be what’s left? He waited seventy years in the ice only to come home to place that no longer feels like home. The faces walking past look back like they don’t know what to make of _him_ , like maybe he can stave off death.

The world still needs Captain America. Maybe Steve Rogers does, too. After all, it’s all he knows how to do, all he’s ever done. Shield is a perfectly good way to get back into the world, to figure out who he is and where he fits. Steve helps them, and they help him. They fill him on everything that happened to his friends, his old team. He gets to see Peggy again, and, when he does, he can’t decide what’s worse: waking up in a world that’s forgotten you or living through it. Before long, not even she can remember him; how long before she leaves him, too? How long before he lives in a world absent of every single thing he loved? If there’s no Howling Commandos, no Bucky Barnes, no Howard Stark, no Peggy Carter, is there even really a Steve Rogers?

Another year and things are starting to settle. Steve is becoming as comfortable as he can with his new life, his new team. He keeps a list of things he missed. Ask anyone, they’ve seen him with it. They’d tell you that he prefers a physical, paper reminder to a note on an iPhone. They don’t know that he can’t ever be without it. It’s always in his pocket day-to-day or in his belt on his stealth suit on missions. They don’t know that he clutches it close to him while he’s sleeping. They don’t know that every night he fears going to sleep because he doesn’t know if he’ll wake up another seventy years in the future.

-

“ _How do I always find myself in this position_ ,” Steve wonders to himself as he dodges another punch from a large, metal fist. The masked man just keeps coming, coming, and Steve feels like he’s facing a machine. Everything’s moving fast, so fast that he must have missed a block because he feels a sharp pain tear through his chest. The man must have punched him or caught him with his knife, but he couldn’t have. He’s yards away from Steve, his mask now at his feet. Steve tries to recenter himself and stares breathlessly at the man. Is he hallucinating? “Bucky?” Steve says the pain in his chest growing.  
“Who the hell is Bucky?”

All Steve can see is the train. He feels the ice cold air on his skin again and the voice, so loud in his ears, of his best friend echoes through the mountains as he slips away just inches from Steve’s grip. He awakens with a sweat. “ _I left him there_ ,” Steve thinks to himself. “ _How long was he there?_ ” He can’t get the thought out of his mind. No one would blame him; no one could survive a fall like that. Besides, the time and manpower it would’ve taken to retrieve Bucky’s body was more than the States had or cared to give at the time. But Bucky hadn’t died. He laid in the snow all alone until someone took him away. Was he awake and aware when it happened? Did he know the footsteps of his saviors were the that of the enemy? The pain was only beginning. He’d be subjected to decades of torture and brainwashing all because he had been left there. Now, an assassin for Hydra, Bucky was far from the man he once was, and Steve only had one choice. He’d already abandoned Bucky once; he wasn’t about to do it again. 

Steve opens his eyes to a speckled, hospital ceiling. He eyes the iPod next to him playing Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man” and knew he could mark it off his list, but even better he knew from the music and the scent of cheap cologne that he wasn’t alone. He knew it must still be the same year. The man next to him was a living reminder of that. Sam Wilson was something Steve couldn’t keep on any list. Steve did wonder how he’d gotten there. Sam told him they’d found him washed up on a shore, but the last thing he remembered was staring up at Bucky. He couldn’t help but wonder as he fell from the carrier if this was what Bucky felt when he fell from the train. However, there was one thing Steve was sure of: Bucky must have pulled him from the water. It was clear to him that Bucky wasn’t going to abandon him either. 

-

Steve refuses to believe that Bucky is anything but innocent. What he’d done under the influence of Hydra was different. Yes, he’d done it, but he wasn’t himself. And this, the assassination of the Wakandan king, T’Chaka, was different. It wasn’t Bucky at all; someone was framing him. Steve knew that, and he was going to do whatever it took to make sure the rest of the world knew, too. He knew what it meant, what he’d lose, choosing Bucky. None of that mattered when it came to him. No one could understand what they’d had between them. Bucky had always been a shelter to Steve, even after the serum. There was nothing that would come before Bucky. Even if the stripped Captain America from Steve Rogers, he’d still choose Bucky. The simple fact of the matter is that, for Steve, choosing Bucky was as much of a choice as breathing. 

Putting Bucky back into cryofreeze wasn’t his first choice, but it wasn’t ever his to make. If there was anyone who could figure out how to unscramble Bucky’s brain, it was Wakanda’s best scientists. It was safer this way. Steve knew that. He also understood that Bucky was afraid of himself, what he could do if someone found him, so if this was Buck’s wish, then it was Steve’s, too. He’d waited this long for Bucky already. What was one year more?

-

The world was so much different than it used to be, now more than ever. Steve Rogers had gone from national hero to criminal to national hero again. He’d found himself a team, people who just wanted to do what’s right, help the world. In between missions, he’d visit Wakanda. Visit Bucky. They’d given him a new, upgraded arm - one worthy of defending Wakanda with. It was the least Bucky and Steve could do, after they’d taken Bucky in, saved him, and housed him. They’d provided space for Steve and his team as well. It was true, Steve finally had it all: a cause to fight for, a place to come home to, and his Bucky.

“Steve?” He heard Bucky call from behind. This was all he said before turning to dust. As if that’s all he needed to say, as if just saying that would save him. Steve gets to him, what’s left of him, and runs his fingers through the ash. He picks up a handful and holds what’s left of his friend in his hand. He’d wanted to scream, to grieve. It wasn’t fair. Seventy years he’d been alone in the ice only to wake up to a world that isn’t his. All he can do is find anyone who might’ve made it this long, too, and he finds Peggy. Just as he begins to adjust to the world, by some act terrible, wonderous twist of fate, Steve finds Bucky, or Bucky finds him, and Steve Rogers is faced with the reality that his best friend is still alive in the world in a place that he can’t reach. He loses him again, loses Peggy, too, and all Steve can do his search and wait until Bucky finds his own way back to the world, and when he does Steve is ready to be with him, to be next to him, even in cryo, and it’s come to this. It’s come to dust. Steve Rogers is the man who can anything except stave off death.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!!!!!


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